Rutgers logo
School of Engineering
  • Events
  • Characterizing Sensorimotor Integration during Gait and Postural Control with Wearable Systems

Characterizing Sensorimotor Integration during Gait and Postural Control with Wearable Systems

Date & Time

Monday, March 11, 2024, 12:15 p.m.-1:15 p.m.

Category

Seminar

Location

Biomedical Engineering Building

599 Taylor Road, Auditorium (Room 102), Piscataway, NJ, 08854

Contact

Francois Berthiaume

Information

Presented by the Department of Biomedical Engineering

Head shot of Black male with short hair, wearing a black suit jacket and white collared shirt.

Daniel Jacobs, PhD 
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA

Abstract: About 1 out of 7 U.S. adults have a mobility disability that negatively impacts their quality of life. Powered robotic orthoses (i.e. exoskeletons) have the potential to improve functional ability for individuals with mobility disabilities by compensating for weakness, increasing stability, and reducing the energetic cost of gait. Although technological strides have been made in wearable systems, we are not yet able to reach the full potential of these systems to reduce the impact of impairment. To bridge this gap, we must better understand the neuromechanics of human-robot collaboration to build a model of the human that can be effective in predicting response to physical assistance. By systemically probing the contribution of the visual and somatosensory information during robot assisted movements, we can develop better models for sensorimotor contribution that can improve our understanding of both assisted and unassisted movements. These models will enable us to optimize the device, controller, and/or training paradigm based on the individual user’s specific impairment and specific rehabilitation needs. This talk will highlight current research experiments using wearable robots and virtual reality to study to how motor adaptation and sensorimotor integration drive the complex and embodied system dynamics underlying gait and posture.

Biography: Daniel Jacobs is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and leads the Robotics in Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (RISE) Lab at Temple University. His research focuses on physical human-robot collaboration in exoskeletons and prosthetic systems for rehabilitation and assistance. Dr. Jacobs received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University, working on the design and control of legged robots. He completed postdoctoral training in Bioengineering at Stanford University and in Kinesiology at the University of Michigan, working on design of wearable sensors and lower-limb exoskeletons. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, a fellow of the NIH Interdisciplinary Rehabilitation Engineering Research Career Development Program (IREK12) and has been funded by state and industry grants.